Jongnic Bontemps: Last News

Usher, H.E.R., Victoria Monét and the soundtrack to The Color Purple were among the winners Monday on the first night of honors being handed out for the 55th NAACP Image Awards, which recognize Black excellence in movies, TV, music, books and podcasts.

Jon Burlingame On the scoring stage at 20th Century-Fox studios in Burbank, composer Jongnic Bontemps is walking around in a “Transformers: The Movie” T-shirt – that’s the animated cartoon from 1986, not the $200-million summer blockbuster he’s just scored. “Violins, play a little softer,” he tells the musicians via intercom from the glass booth behind the stage. “It has to be emotional.” Later, after a rehearsal on a different cue, he tells the string players, “It needs to feel like a warm blanket.” Bontemps is making movie history. He has just spent two years writing the music for “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” the seventh in the big-screen franchise, and he’s supervising the recording of the final pieces of the score with a 74-piece orchestra. The film opens Friday.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts has been revealed – you can find the full list of songs below.A prequel set in 1994, Rise Of The Beasts sees the Autobots and Decepticons joined by three more factions of warring Transformers: the Maximals, Terrorcons and Predacons.The official synopsis reads: “Optimus Prime and the Autobots take on their biggest challenge yet. When a new threat capable of destroying the entire planet emerges, they must team up with a powerful faction of Transformers known as the Maximals to save Earth.”The film will be released in cinemas on June 9, but fans can already stream the soundtrack and score on Spotify and other popular music apps.The seventh film in the franchise features a number of ’90s hip-hop tracks, as well as an original collaboration between Tobe Nwigwe, Nas, and Jacob Banks.

Jon Burlingame Jongnic Bontemps might just qualify as the unofficial composer of the Black Lives Matter movement.No fewer than four major documentaries on African American subjects — airing now, or soon, on CNN, Netflix, National Geographic and Amazon Prime — feature scores written by the Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based composer.“I asked the universe for this,” Bontemps admits.